The field of agriculture relies upon many different machines in order to provide efficiency and lower the cost of food production. Perhaps the most well-known of these machines is the combine, which is used to harvest various grains. After the grains are harvested they must be emptied from the combine bin to various offloading vehicles such as trailers. The conventional method of emptying the conveyor bid relies upon the use of an auger-based drive system which moves the harvested material along the rotational axis of the auger. While these systems have worked well for many years, they are not without significant disadvantages. First, the overall length of an auger-based system is fixed. This means that the offloading vehicles must always be located a specific distance away from the combine. As one can imagine, such distances are not always feasible based upon crop layout, field obstructions, and the like. This requires much jockeying of the combine to allow for a wide path, thus resulting in wasted time. Secondly, auger-based systems are difficult to fully empty due to their design and reliance upon other systems associated with the combine. This makes it exceedingly difficult to start up a full auger again in the future due to internal friction forces caused by the grain residing along the auger threading.
Various attempts have been made to provide improved combines and grain unloading devices; however, while these attempts may achieve their purported objective each suffers from one or more disadvantage or deficiency related to design or utilization. Particularly, none of these attempts effectively address the decreased production efficiency and operational control limitations provided by conventional mechanical harvesting techniques.